


The Adoption of Darcy Lewis

by Selenay



Series: Damage Limitation [5]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crack, Humor, M/M, No PR managers were harmed in this fic, One was lightly singed, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why would you assume that it was anything to do with us?" Natasha asked.</p><p>"Someone removed all the products that weren't Widow Barbie or Captain Ken and stacked them neatly outside." Phil glared at her. "And they also rescued the warehouse cats before the fires started."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adoption of Darcy Lewis

Phil sighed and gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk, waiting patiently as Natasha and Steve sat down and somehow still managed to look like they were standing at attention.

Natasha never stood at attention.

"Sir, I ca-"

Steve broke off and Phil wondered just how hard Natasha had kicked him. Natasha allowed a small, bland smile to twitch at her lips.

"I thought we should do this away from your teammates," Phil said. "We shouldn't encourage Stark by giving him ideas."

Then he placed three newspaper articles, neatly clipped out, on the desk in front of them. Two had accompanying photos.

"Would you like to explain these?" he asked.

There was no response and Phil had to admire Natasha's poker face.

"It would appear that a certain manufacturer of Avengers merchandise has suffered several inexplicable warehouse fires recently," he prompted.

Natasha remained bland and blank-faced while the tips of Steve's ears turned a bright shade of pink.

"Specifically," Phil continued, "in warehouses storing Black Widow Barbies and Captain Kens before shipment to retail outlets."

"Why would you assume that it was anything to do with us?" Natasha asked.

"Someone removed all the products that weren't Widow Barbie or Captain Ken and stacked them neatly outside." Phil glared at her. "And they also rescued the warehouse cats before the fires started."

"The arsonists were obviously animal lovers." Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Why does that lead you to us?"

"We-"

Steve broke off with a pained yelp.

"Experience." Phil tapped one of the photos. "I recognise the style."

Natasha shrugged.

"However, luckily they have excellent insurance and there is sufficient time to restore the stock levels before the Christmas rush."

"Isn't that wonderful," Natasha said faintly.

"You should note that I have eyes everywhere," Phil said, "and if any further warehouse fires or other incidents natural or unnatural should happen to damage Avengers merchandise, there will be consequences."

"I'm sorry, it won't happen again," Steve said earnestly.

"See that it doesn't."

Anything else that Phil might have said was interrupted by a loud knock and his door swung open to admit two people.

"Agent Coulson!"

"Ms Lewis." Phil wondered briefly which god he had pissed off this morning to be having this day. "What an unexpected...appearance."

"I know!" Darcy said cheerfully. "I totally didn't expect to be assigned to you when I applied."

"Applied?" Phil asked, already preparing himself for the worst.

"For a job." Darcy grinned. "I graduated last month and Clint gave me your card, said if I needed a job and didn't want to stay on as Jane's assistant which, by the way, doesn't even spring to peanuts, I should come and see SHIELD."

It took Phil a moment to parse the jumbled sentence. Someone in HR was going to face retribution.

"And you're assigned to me in what capacity?" he asked.

"Personal assistant," Darcy said and pointed to the thin, nervous man beside her. "I picked up this guy in the corridors looking lost. He says that he's your new PR manager."

Natasha stood and tugged on Steve's arm. Her lips twitched into a full, evil smile.

"I'll just leave you with this, then," she said. "You look like you've got your hands full."

"So, what's my first job, boss?" Darcy asked, bouncing a little on her toes.

Phil made a note not to let her bounce anywhere near Stark. Or at least, anywhere near Stark where Pepper might be watching his reactions.

He took a deep breath. "I think that we'll need some coffee, Ms. Lewis."

***

"Agent Coulson?"

Phil looked up and sighed as he recognised the nervous young PR man. He almost missed Ms. Blake's incessant perkiness. The new one was so nervous that he made Phil twitch.

"Mr Royale, what can I do for you?" Phil said with a soothing smile.

Royale almost jumped and it seemed to take all his courage to walk forward and shake Phil's hand. He was tall, thin and his blond hair had that limp, carefully combed look of a man fighting early baldness with every tool at his disposal.

"Um," Royale said and dropped half a dozen files onto Phil's desk where they sprawled in an untidy heap. "I thought we should go over a few things. Um. Ms Blake left notes."

Phil suppressed a wince. "What kind of notes?"

"Quite extensive ones, sir," Royale said. "Um. That's actually what I've spent the last two days reading. I've also got the most recent polling numbers. Ah."

"And?" Phil asked because sometimes, like a ripping off a band-aid, it was best to just get the polling numbers over with.

Royale ran a hand through his hair, which definitely didn't help his appearance. "Um. The Avengers are currently at eight-eight percent approval. That's up from what you had just after the Disney World incident, sir, so...um..."

"We've had a couple of quiet weeks," Phil said. "I think it's the summer break. Fewer students in the labs."

"Ah. Er. Yes, sir."

Royale looked like he didn't know whether to take Phil seriously or not.

"Anyway," Royale said, with a valiant attempt to sound assertive, "I thought you might like to see the promotional material on the latest action figures that marketing is planning. Here, I've brought a briefing pack. For your team. Um."

Phil took the folder and flicked through it quickly. It was going to be a nightmare, he could already see it.

"Thank you, Mr. Royale," he said politely. "Was there anything else?"

"There was one thing, sir."

***

Phil set his stack of folders down on the table of the conference room in Stark Tower and watched Darcy carefully set a large tray of coffees in the middle of the table.

"Is there any kind of platter that I could use for these?" she asked, peering into the large paper bag that she had also brought.

"I have no idea," Phil said. "Why exactly are you here, Ms Lewis?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm your assistant. And this is a team meeting."

"This isn't a meeting in SHIELD facilities," Phil pointed out.

Darcy shrugged and ripped the paper bag open, using it as a make-shift platter for the danishes and donuts that she had brought. She wrapped a jelly donut in a napkin and placed it in front of Phil with one of the cups of coffee.

"My job is to assist you," she said. "I'm assisting. The location of my assistance was never specified in my contract."

Before Phil could say anything about that, the rest of the team began filing in and immediately locked onto the bounty of baked goodies on the table.

"Hey, donuts," Stark said cheerfully. "We don't usually rate donuts. What happened?"

"Clint!" Darcy shrieked cheerfully. "Baby! I was starting to wonder what had happened to you. I've been here for, like, three days and I haven't seen you once."

To Phil's growing horror, Clint picked up Darcy and swung her around, planting big, sloppy kisses on her cheek before placing her back on the ground. Darcy fanned herself for a moment and grinned.

Stark and Steve both looked like Clint had grown a second head. Natasha just smirked and Banner and Thor wore matching bemused expressions.

"I take it we know this person?" Stark asked.

Darcy bounced slightly and Stark's eyes widened.

"We're keeping her," he announced.

"This is Ms. Lewis," Phil said, giving Stark a quelling look that rolled right off him. "She'll be my assistant."

"Hi," Darcy said cheerfully. "Hi Thor, Jane sends stuff that I'm definitely not going to say out loud and also, can you call her? Before she drives me insane?"

Thor looked mildly abashed. "I shall telephone her as soon as Agent Coulson has finished our discussion. I have been without the ability to call her for several days."

"He means, he sat on his cell," Clint said, "and we're not crazy enough to let him borrow ours."

"Indeed, they are small and very easy to break," Thor said.

"Only if you sit on them," Stark muttered.

"If we could begin?" Phil asked, trying not to sound pleading.

"Sure thing, boss," Clint said.

"Somehow, making jokes about kissing up to the boss is less funny when you're actually kissing the boss." Stark glared. "You've ruined half my really good punchlines, Barton."

Clint flipped him off and Phil groaned internally because this was going to be one of *those* team meetings, he could already tell.

"That's right!" Darcy said, immediately taking a seat next to Clint. "You are in so much trouble. How didn't I know before CNN?"

"Er," Clint said, looking desperately towards Phil, who just raised his eyebrows.

"You'll have to fill me in completely later," Darcy ordered. "Don't leave out any of the details."

"Actually, I have a meeting with Agent Barton after this," Phil said, "to discuss SHIELD protocols for offering jobs to civilians he meets in bars in New Mexico."

"Somebody's in trouble," Stark sang under his breath.

Phil sighed and resigned himself to having a nasty headache. "If we could turn to the items we are actually here to discuss? Thank you. Marketing has approved a new phase of merchandising."

He handed around the brochures that Royale had given him and waited because there was no way that any of them would pass up such a golden opportunity.

"Sir, is that really an action figure of you?" Clint said slowly.

Phil nodded, keeping his face as bland as possible.

"I...need that."

"Barton, you are not buying an action figure of me," Phil said firmly.

"But action figure Hawkeye gets lonely!"

There was a loud thunk as Stark's head hit the table. "I really did not need to know this much about your relationship."

"I know what you mean," Steve said, his eyes widening as he looked at the brochure. "Why do I have so many heads?"

Natasha had a pleased smile. "This is much better. Mine actually resembles a human woman this time."

"Yeah, and you get all those guns, too," Darcy said. "I want all of them."

"None of you are buying action figures of yourselves or each other," Phil said. "No matter how realistic or how lonely the action figures you already have that you said you didn't have may be."

Clint sunk down in his chair and didn't look at him.

"The other item that I have from our new PR manager are these." He held up a stack of white envelopes. "Don't share the passwords. Don't post anything you don't want to see in public. Don't do anything that will make me angry."

"What are they?" Steve asked.

Phil took a deep breath, sensing that this was going to go horribly, terribly wrong. "Facebook accounts."

***

The knock at Phil's door was hesitant and light, which meant that he knew immediately who it was before Royale could open the door.

"Agent Coulson?" Royale said, peering uncertainly around the half-open door.

Phil smiled blandly and closed the folder he was working on. "How may I help you, Mr. Royale?"

For once, Royale didn't look like he was about to faint from sheer terror as he approached the desk and Phil started to hope that maybe, just maybe, he would actually last more than three months with SHIELD.

"It's just a couple of things," Royale said. "Your polling numbers. They're, um, yes."

"Yes?"

"It's been a quiet patch, hasn't it?"

"I'm sure it will liven up when schools go back," Phil said. "We usually get at least a couple of incidents from foolish young science students trying out their new genetic sequencing equipment."

Royale looked like he didn't know whether to believe him or start fitting Phil for a straight-jacket.

"Er," he said. "Well. Um. Yes. Polling numbers."

"I understood that was the point of this conversation."

"Yes. Well, they're not brilliant." Royale swallowed. "Down to eight-two percent. We're losing a lot of the twenty to forty demographic."

Phil managed to contain his wince. "Why?"

"Um. We held a couple of focus groups. We think...well...apparently the public wants the Avengers out there fighting. With everything so quiet...well. Yes."

"The public is concerned that we've done our job so well that we haven't needed to tear half of New York apart in an attempt to save it for four weeks?"

"That sums it up. Yes." Royale consulted his notes. "And there are some concerns about the lack of public appearances for your entire team. Apparently people are running out of pictures. Um."

That information was not getting back to the Avengers. Phil could just picture the chaos it would cause.

"Was there anything else?"

"I, er, yes?" Royale shuffled the folders in his hands and opened one a pale lilac one. Apparently PR had a comprehensive stationary budget. "Before she took her leave of absence-"

"Ms. Blake resigned."

"Ah. Yes. Well, before that...happened. Ms. Blake launched a competition. Did she mention it to you?"

"We did discuss it, yes," Phil said. "School children were going to write essays to win a chance for some of the Avengers to visit their school, if I'm remembering correctly."

"Well, the closing deadline was last week. And we had quite a few entrants."

"Define 'quite a few'."

"Several. Uh. Thousand." Royale sighed. "My office is filled with mail bags. I can barely reach my desk. Ms. Blake promised that all of the essays would be read and...um...I can't. Read them all. Not even if I did nothing but read the essays for the next five years."

"Are you asking for some help, Mr. Royale?" Phil asked gently.

"An assistant or two would be useful," Royale admitted.

Phil smiled and Royale paled. "I have just the people in mind."

***

"Are there no minimum education standards in this country?" Darcy said, despair lacing her voice.

"They let Barton have a high school diploma, so apparently not," Stark said.

Clint flipped him off lazily and Phil decided not to mention that Clint's educational history was a little less traditional than Stark apparently knew.

Instead he slid a stack of ten pages across the conference room table towards Stark. "I'd advise you to ask Pepper to proof-read any future essay competitions you enter before commenting further."

"I was trying to be in character?"

"Most third-graders can spell 'ability' correctly and consistently, particularly if they're capable of correctly using words like 'altruistic' and 'philology', which most of them aren't. They've also outgrown green crayons."

"How did I end up on punishment detail?" Banner asked.

"That thing with the pop-corn maker last week." Phil raised his eyebrows and Banner subsided. "Natasha, Steve, I trust you know why you were helping?"

Natasha muttered something in Russian under her breath and Steve flushed.

"Did you actually find a winner?" Phil asked.

Darcy brightened up. "Sure did, boss! Well, a short-list of them. Six. Could we go to all of their schools?"

"Or we could each take a school?" Clint suggested hopefully.

"No." Phil said. "Never under any circumstances are you or Stark going near a group of children that you could influence."

"The competition was specifically for Natasha, Thor and Steve," Darcy said, patting Clint's shoulder comfortingly. "Sorry, babe, I don't think you're getting past the boss on this one."

"Given our recent light workload," Phil said, "I think that Ms. Lewis' suggestion could be considered. I'll send out your schedules by the end of the week."

***

Phil's nose was buried in the largest cup of coffee available as he walked into his office, which was why he didn't spot the innocuous white envelope and beige folder on his desk until he sat down. He'd barely had two hours of sleep and Clint was only involved in the lack of sleep in the sense of spending five hours in medical getting patched up for a large portion of it.

It had been a bad night.

There would be memos going to all the colleges about letting ambitious PhD students have unsupervised lab time.

The envelope was addressed to him in neat, tiny script and he took a deep gulp of the coffee before opening it. As he read and then opened the folder, Phil wished that it was late enough to add something stronger to his coffee.

***

"I'd like to point out that there is nothing bad on my Facebook account," Clint announced.

His voice was slightly nasally due to the broken nose and his two black eyes were looking impressive now.

"That's because you lost your password the day after we got them," Natasha pointed out.

Clint shrugged. "Whatever. There's still no reason for Coulson to punish me, unlike the rest of you, so I'm not sleeping on the couch tonight."

Stark made a choking noise. "Barton, you have your own floor with your own bed here. Which I like to pretend you still sleep in. Stop puncturing my bubble of happy denial."

Phil cleared his throat before Clint could say add anything. "You should think very carefully before you say anything else in this meeting, Stark. You were one of the ones that Mr. Royale specifically cited in his resignation letter. Your Facebook timeline was also a major portion of his supporting evidence."

Stark gulped and mimed zipping his lips. Clint looked pleased with himself, which was an expression that combined with his battered face for an appearance unfortunately close to demented.

"I do not understand," Thor said. "Why would our Faces Books distress Mr. Royale?"

"He was running the Facebook fan page," Darcy said, her eyes never leaving her StarkPad. "And he was also keeping an eye on you guys and wow, I see what he means. Natasha, I'm going to need a translation of some of this stuff, OK?"

"He was running the fan page?" Banner said, suddenly looking guilt-stricken.

"He was," Phil confirmed blandly.

"Oh."

"I had hoped for better from all of you."

Everyone except Clint and Darcy looked suitably ashamed. Even Stark.

"I've revoked access to all your Facebook accounts," Phil continued, "and SHIELD is attempting to have them deleted."

"No!" Darcy said quickly. "You can't do that! There's some serious gold here."

Phil looked at her.

"Uh, sir."

"Ms. Lewis, there are children out there reading everything they wrote," Phil said. "Everything. Children who had school visits from two of the worst culprits last week. We've had at least twenty complaints from concerned parents. We can only be thankful that none of those parents read Russian. Or Latin."

Darcy shrugged. "OK, so some of it got out of hand. Those Bieber-manips? Really?"

Stark rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. Those things are everywhere. I'd be shocked if any kids hadn't already seen them."

"The point is, there is gold here. The fan page has ten thousand likes and it's only been up for three weeks." Darcy shook her head admiringly. "People really like to be on the inside, you know? And Steve's wall is amazing. Where did you get the idea for recreating big Avengers battles with Lego?"

Steve grinned. "Something I saw on the Internet."

"You are a genius."

Stark opened his mouth and closed it again quickly when he caught Phil's glare.

"Seriously, get someone to run the fan page, get Steve access to his account again and you guys will rule Facebook." Darcy grinned. "It might even get you some positive spin the next time something R-rated gets into the media."

As Phil had been the cause of one of those incidents (apparently That Kiss had made number two on a recent poll for "hottest kisses of 2013", a fact that Clint had been crowing over for days), he was not the only person in the room looking uncomfortable and trying to avoid people's eyes.

"Joke, guys," Darcy said when the silence had stretched for just that little bit too long. "Seriously, joking."

She added something under her breath that Phil pretended not to hear and have to fire her for.

"So, who votes Darcy as the new fan page admin?" Stark said quickly, raising both hands.

Darcy's eyes widened as every Avenger raised their hands. Phil just glared at them and resisted the urge to put his head on the table and weep.

***

"Agent Coulson!"

The voice was loud, one could even say strident, and it cut straight into Phil's headache like a knife. The owner of the voice was a complete stranger. She was tall, solidly built and reminded Phil uncomfortably of the cruel headmistress in one of his niece's favourite books.

"Can I help you?" Phil asked.

The woman strode forward and stood in front of Phil's desk with her arms crossed.

"You can take this as notice of my resignation," she said. "I've sent the official letter by email, copied to you as well as Director Fury."

"I'm...sorry?" Phil sighed. "I apologise, but I'm not quite sure who you are."

The woman gaped at him for a moment before collecting herself. "My name is Miriam Abernathy. We've exchanged a number of emails over the last two weeks."

"You're the new PR manager," Phil said with a sinking feeling. "They don't usually email me. They usually prefer to, ah, discuss matters with me in person."

"I *was* the new PR manager. I am now your former PR manager. I heard about the shenanigans that happen here and I was certain that most of it had to be a poorly controlled media presence, that Blake woman seemed completely incompetent." Miriam Abernathy took a deep breath. "However, I'm now convinced that she performed admirably under extremely trying circumstances. And I don't usually meet with my clients, I prefer to have everything in writing."

Phil focused on the one thing that had actually made sense in that small tirade. "You've resigned already?"

"Yes, Agent Coulson. And not a moment too soon. Poor Ms. Blake. Did you know that she'd taken a job with that daycare? Apparently she was so traumatised by her time in this mad house that she decided to change careers."

"Oh."

"Indeed. I'll see myself out."

***

There was already a jelly donut and a large, steaming cup of black coffee at his usual place at the head of the conference room table when Phil arrived. Darcy was guarding the box from the bakery with fierce glares directed at Clint and Stark whenever they looked in her direction.

Natasha arrived last and was given the largest chocolate twist in the box. She smiled her thanks and almost seemed to collapse into her chair. White bandages swathed both of her hands and there was a sizable bruise on her cheek.

Phil could sympathise. His own burns were starting to hurt again and the two cracked ribs made breathing painful, but he couldn't afford take any of the painkillers until this meeting was over.

When everyone had settled and been granted treats depending on Darcy's assessment of their relative guilt. Phil cleared his throat.

"We're very, very sorry," Clint said immediately. "Really."

Phil held up a sheet of paper. "Thanks to your actions, our latest PR manager has resigned."

"We had a new PR manager?"

"We did."

Clint sunk lower in his chair and looked guilty. For a moment Stark looked happy and then he caught Phil's eye and pasted on his guilt again. It was not convincing.

"Can someone please explain," Phil said, looking around the table, "who thought that it was a good idea to have a daycare in this building."

There was silence until Tony cleared his throat.

"Aaah, that would be Pepper."

Phil looked at him steadily.

"Yeah, she said that if we're using part of this building for Stark Industries then we needed to provide a daycare. Something about staff morale or staff retention or something. I pointed out that we've got a ton of labs here and things blow up, but she insisted."

"Darcy, put a call to Pepper onto my to-do list for tomorrow."

"Sure thing, boss."

Tony looked quite cheerful until Phil said, "And who thought it was a good idea to weaponize the daycare?"

"OK, firstly, none of that stuff was built as a weapon. Second, I really thought none of that stuff actually worked. Thirdly..." Stark paused. "OK, yeah, I got nothing. A little help here, guys?"

"Stark, the next time you try to clear out your workshop," Phil said, "remember the sight of a three year old with a pulse gun. I've got video footage if your memory gets foggy."

"Hey, nobody actually died!" Stark protested. "None of the kids even got singed!"

"Luckily. Otherwise this would be a completely different conversation, probably taking place in SHIELD holding cells." Stark finally looked genuinely remorseful so Phil turned his attention back to untangling the sequence of events. "Could someone tell me who let Barton into the daycare?"

The tips of Steve's ears went pink. "He looked so down when we did the school visits last month. I thought it would cheer him up."

"It did cheer me up."

"He's pretty good with kids," Natasha said. "They're on the same level with him."

"Thank you. I think."

"Barton, why did you think that a game of tag with the weaponized toddlers was a good idea?"

"A couple of the little ones started to cry when that big lizard thing came in. I thought it would be a good distraction."

The terrifying thing was that his explanation actually made sense.

"I honestly don't know whether to commend you or discipline you for that one," Phil said.

"How about both?" Clint grinned unrepentantly. "We could-"

"No, no, stop whatever you're about to say," Stark cut in. "No. If you continue that thought, I'll have to bill SHIELD for the therapy."

"We'll discuss this later, Barton."

"Sir, yes sir, absolutely sir."

There was a loud thunk as Stark's head hit the table. It was probably wrong to feel a small thrill of satisfaction at the sound.

"You know, it isn't all bad," Darcy said, her fingers flicking over her StarkPad. "I hacked into the files and it looks like this morning's polls for you guys are pretty solid. Lots of big hunky guys - and a gorgeous girl, Natasha - rescuing a bunch of children from mutant lizards? Ratings. Winner."

"I think the kids did most of the rescuing themselves," Banner said. "You know, with the pulse guns."

Darcy shrugged. "Still, you guys came out of this without looking too bad. Except for...oh..."

"Oh?" Phil said, getting that sinking feeling again.

"Yeah," Darcy said, wincing. "Washington Post. Got an interview with Melinda Blake before the ambulance took her away."

***

"Agent Coulson?"

Phil was learning to dread the knock on the door followed by his name. He looked up and blinked. The man standing in his doorway looked like he had just walked off a fashion shoot, complete with skinny jeans, black-framed glasses and perfect hair.

Taking his silence for invitation, the man sauntered forward with a hand outstretched. There was a distinct lack of folders in his hands.

"Agent Coulson," the man said, "Rick Jones. I'm your new PR rep."

"Oh no. I'm so very sorry," Phil said, the words out of his mouth before his brain caught up.

He was going to have words with Darcy about her attempts to switch his coffee for decaff.

Jones looked a little puzzled but his expression cleared quickly. "I've been reading your files and I'm very excited to be working with you, sir."

"Don't worry, that will change."

Phil looked down at the file on his desk, which was Thor's latest attempt at a mission report, and closed it firmly.

Then he smiled and shook Jones' hands. "Welcome to the team. If I can help in any way, my door is always open."

"Thank you, Agent Coulson," Jones said, smiling brightly. "I've just got one thing today. Two words: chat show."

"No."

"What could go wrong?"

Phil stared at him. "Have you actually seen any of their media appearances?"

Jone shrugged. "No. They haven't made any. Everything the news shows have is footage caught in the middle of a fight, during the clean-up after a fight or at some kind of event where the Avengers are making an appearance. None of them have done the chat show circuit, unless you count that time with Stark on the Daily Show."

"That was before his involvement with SHIELD and we generally try to forget that it happened."

"Exactly." Jones grinned. "Don't worry, it will be awesome. I'll coach them personally. Now, when can I schedule Barton?"

Phil promised himself a very large Scotch the moment Jones left his office.

***

"Should I find some oxygen or something, boss?"

"They're hyperventilating," Phil said. "Paper bags would be more appropriate."

"Right, on it."

Phil kept rubbing calming circles on Clint's back. Natasha was sitting next Jones, carefully polishing a knife. It probably wasn't helping Jones to remember how to breathe.

"Did I really just say all that?" Clint asked weakly.

"That depends." Phil hesitated. "If you remember talking about the targeted hormone disruptor incident and Disney World then yes, you did just say all that."

Clint moaned and put his head down.

"We coached this," Jones said, disbelief in his voice. "We ran it, we ran the questions. How did that just happen?"

"Those were not the questions we ran," Clint said, looking up to point accusingly. "The questions we practised? Never came up! That's how this happened."

"I told the team specifically not to ask about any of those things!" Jones wailed. "Those were on the list of banned topics!"

"Mr. Jones, this may not be the time to discuss this, but...how long have you been in PR?" Phil asked.

Jones gulped and pushed his glasses up. "Actually, this was my first job."

Phil resisted the urge to put his head down on Clint's shoulder and hide.

"But Director Fury said that he was impressed by my references," Jones continued. "He offered me the job before we were even halfway through the interview."

"You were the only applicant," Natasha said. "Of course he offered you the job. Nobody wants the job. People run screaming into the night rather than take the job."

"Oh."

Jones deflated totally, even his beautifully coiffed hair looking flat.

"I'm going to do you a favour," Phil said. "I'm going to allow you to resign, effective immediately. I won't even insist that you compose a highly-strung and potentially embarrassing resignation letter."

"Shit, boss, those letters are my favourite part."

"Too bad."

"Is there any chance nobody saw that?"

Phil cupped Clint's jaw, tipping his face up so that their eyes could meet, and said gently, "Absolutely none. Stark probably had it on a big screen in the tower and there was probably popcorn."

"Fuck. My. Life."

"You should probably leave now," Natasha said, prodding Jones with her knife. "Don't worry about clearing your desk. A vacation might be good. I hear New Zealand is nice this time of year."

Jones swallowed audibly and took her hint, passing Darcy at a run as she returned bearing paper bags.

"Guess he remembered how to breathe, huh?" she said. "Natasha, have his muffin."

She gave a bag each to Natasha and Clint and both their faces brightened at the scent of chocolate.

Phil silently mouthed his thanks as Darcy sat down and got out her StarkPad.

"So, you want the good news or the bad news?" she asked after a couple of minutes.

"Bad news," Clint and Natasha chorused.

Phil nodded.

"OK, well, looks like you've got a couple of groups targeting you for your low morals and perverted life-style," Darcy said. "I'm pretty sure we can ignore them, though, because wow they can't even spell pervert and their grasp on anatomy is hilarious."

Natasha peered over Darcy's shoulder, offering her a bite of muffin at the same time. "How did they ever get pregnant with that level of knowledge of the male body?"

Darcy shrugged. "Beats me. Like I said, I don't think we need to worry about them. And the worst that most of the really conservative sites are doing is reposting all the stuff they blogged when you guys got splashed all over CNN that time."

"And the good news?" Clint asked.

"You're trending on Twitter, the footage hit YouTube twenty minutes ago with a ninety-nine percent positive rating from ten thousand users and everyone on Tumblr is having some kind of mass orgasm, although it's kind of hard to tell for sure because they're mostly communicating through vowels." Darcy beamed. "I don't have any polling data available yet, but at my guess you're looking at maybe a point or two drop overall, but a big boost in the twenty to forty demographic. And you guys were already riding high in the polls after that thing with Namor's squid last week, so that still puts you well into the nineties for the second week running."

Phil looked at her speculatively.

"We'll need to get figures on merchandise sales as well, obviously," Darcy continued, "but my guess? Sales will be up for the next few weeks and with the costumes that marketing is proposing for Halloween, this could be our best quarter yet."

"There are going to be costumes?" Natasha said curiously.

"Are there ever! You guys are, like, the hottest property for cosplaying right now. Well, not the boss-man obviously, but it's kind of hard to cosplay him without getting mistaken for James Bond." Darcy shrugged. "Sorry about that boss."

"Darcy, how would you like a promotion?"

She bounced in her seat for a moment and then stopped, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "What kind of promotion?"

Phil allowed himself a small smile. "Media aide. It would be in addition to your other duties and there would, of course, be a significant pay increase."

"That's a fancy term for PR manager. No way. No fucking way," Darcy said firmly. "No." She hesitated. "How significant is significant?"

**Author's Note:**

> So, it has come to my attention that when I was randomly picking names out of the air for PR managers to torture, I managed to actually use a name already in use in canon *headdesk* Just so you know, the Rick Jones in this fic? No relation to canon Rick Jones. Oh, Marvel, so many characters, so many names, I need to remember to check your database before creating OCs.


End file.
